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Reviewed by Jerry Kloby In 1995 when Robert Putnam published an article titled “Bowling Alone” in The Journal of Democracy he attracted a great deal of attention and the bowling alone thesis sparked widespread reaction. Were Americans less connected to each other than they had been in the past or were Putnam’s preliminary findings, as some critics claimed, the result of faulty data, inadequate research or the subjectivity of nostalgia? Some skepticism is bound to continue but Putnam’s new book is very convincing. It is over 400 pages of text complemented by another 100 pages of footnotes and appendixes. Many of Putnam’s original hypotheses are supported by a great wealth of data put together by a team of nearly 50 researchers. Sociologist William Julius Wilson calls Bowling Alone a tour de force and I don't think it is a stretch to call the book one of the more impressive works of social science ever written. In Bowling Alone Putnam confronts a number of critical questions about American society. Why has participation in the American political system waned? Are Americans more isolated from each other than in the past? Has social engagement declined along with civic engagement? How important is social capital? How can it be rebuilt? One of the culprits that Putnam identifies in the loss of social capital is the increased significance of television watching in the United States, particularly among the younger generations. This component of Putnam’s argument in his original "Bowling Alone" article received a lot of attention. It's importance may have been overstated and Putnam offers some clarifications of the changing impact of TV, and the media in general, in the new book. Putnam declares that the decline in America's social capital paralleled the growing ubiquity of the television. Among the findings he cites as evidence of the corrosive effect of television is that at least half of all Americans usually watch TV by themselves and that each hour of television viewing per day means roughly a 10% reduction in most forms of civic activism (p. 228). More recent generations watch more televisions, which may account for the fact that “compared with teenagers in the 1950s, young people in the 1990s have fewer, weaker, and more fluid friendships” (p. 226). The isolation of youth may be a contributing factor in the large rise in the suicide rate of 15 to 24 year olds from 1950 to 1995 (p. 261). Other stress indicators that correlate with social isolation such as headaches, sleeplessness and digestive problems have also increased and younger people are now more likely than older people to say they are unhappy, a reversal of past tendencies (p. 263). Putnam notes that not all TV viewers are the same, some watch more for entertainment and some more for information, and he finds that the latter are more likely to be civically engaged. He also notes that newspaper reading is highly correlated with social and civic engagement. Furthermore, Americans who watch the news on television are more likely to read the daily newspaper but those who rely solely on TV for the news are not as engaged (pp. 219-220). The role television has played in America's declining social capital is just one of the provocative discussions found in Bowling Alone, other discussions about the changing nature of our social interactions with friends, relatives, and neighbors, are at least as provocative but have not received the attention they deserve. The roles that work and increased commuting time have played in the erosion of social capital are also very important. Not all of this is incontrovertible but the vast bulk of it is worthy of being discussed in community organizations and educational institutions across the country. The cost of low levels of social capital is, after all, very high. Bowling Alone is a powerful and well-researched documentation of the decline of social capital in the United States over the last 30 years. Actually, to call it well-researched is a terrible understatement, the data presented in Bowling Alone nearly overwhelms the reader with its forcefulness and its surprising consensus. Bowling Alone may turn out to be the most influential and talked about social science book of the next ten or twenty years. It is that important. For more on America's declining social capital, download our report at: http://www.communityknowledge.net/Newsletter5.pdf A few words about Putnam's data sources: Bowling Alone draws on copious data collected over decades. The Roper survey organization, for example, collected data every month from 1973 to 1994 from thousands of Americans about their participation in politics. Putnam also relies on the General Social Survey conducted by the National Opinion Research Center which has been providing social scientists with high quality data since 1972. Also used are the Survey Research Center of the University of Michigan which has conducted the NES (National Election Survey) since 1952, and DDB Needham (an advertising agency) which has questioned 87,000 Americans about their civic and social activities since 1975. Putnam also uses data from numerous groups that have kept track of the number of citizen groups and nonprofit organizations and, in some cases, the number of members.
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